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Neural Network Surrogate Model Speeds Up Superconducting Magnet Simulation

Recently, a domestic research team has achieved an important breakthrough in the field of electromagnetic analysis and design of high-temperature superconducting magnets. The research paper "A Surrogate Model for High-Temperature Superconducting Magnets to Predict Current Distribution with Neural Networks," completed by Professor Qu Timing's team, has been officially accepted by the top journal in the superconductivity field, *Superconductivity*. This research innovatively introduces deep learning into the electromagnetic analysis of high-temperature superconducting magnets and successfully constructs a neural network-based surrogate model, providing a brand-new technical pathway for solving complex current distribution prediction and rapid optimization of magnet parameters...

2026-11-09

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant Restart: After Removing a Tilted Fuel Assembly, How Far Remains to Grid Connection?

At the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, Holtec manufactured a specialized lifting rig and transfer cask for a tilted fuel assembly. On October 21, the company confirmed that the assembly had been removed from the reactor pressure vessel and transferred to the spent fuel pool. On October 29, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright visited the plant, and Holtec's project update on the same day still listed fuel loading completion, testing, inspections, and operational readiness as return-to-service work. Palisades was shut down in 2022 and had entered the decommissioning pathway. This removal allowed the fuel loading project to continue, and also exposed a period in the restart plan that is easily underestimated—after equipment is brought back to condition...

2026-11-09

Salem Nuclear Power Plant Proposes Approximately 200 MW Uprate: How Can Old Units Generate More Power?

For a nuclear power plant to deliver 200 MW more to the grid, construction may begin with a steam component beside the turbine. Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) disclosed on November 2 that the two units at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey are jointly proposed to add approximately 200 MW of generating capacity, of which about 112 MW would belong to PSEG. Investor materials subsequently published by the company divide the modifications across 2027 to 2029, including both an approximately 7% increase in reactor thermal power and modifications to the steam-water loop. The former figure measures the additional capacity at the grid interface, while the latter measures the change in core heat output. Only by separating these two figures can one clearly see where the additional electricity from an old nuclear...

2026-11-09

UT MD Anderson Cancer Center Collaborates on Development of Proton and Helium Ion Therapy Platform

Recently, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (UT MD Anderson) in the United States and Israeli proton therapy equipment company P-Cure reached a strategic collaboration to jointly develop and validate a compact upright particle therapy platform. The two parties aim to enable a single system to deliver both proton and helium ion beams, so that in the future the particle type can be selected based on tumor location, disease characteristics, and treatment goals. The collaboration will start with the existing proton therapy equipment. P-Cure's compact proton system has received marketing clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); the equipment uses a synchrotron to generate proton beams and delivers dose to the target area through pencil beam scan...

2026-11-09

NRC Plans to Develop Advanced Oversight Process for New Reactors

Recently, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) revealed that it is actively considering tailoring an Advanced Reactor Oversight Process (AROP) for new nuclear power and advanced reactor projects, aiming to systematically draw on the mature oversight experience gained from approximately 25 years of continuous operation of the existing fleet of nuclear power plants. As the long-standing core of regulation, the NRC's Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) is primarily used for inspection and safety assessment of the operating reactor fleet. With the emergence of a large number of new nuclear energy projects in the future that are fundamentally different from traditional unit designs, the NRC has recently held a series of public meetings to comprehensively introduce the AROP ...

2026-11-09

ITER Organization Successfully Completes Half-Current Test of Toroidal Field Magnet

Recently, the magnet cold test facility of the ITER Organization successfully completed the cryogenic cold test of the second Toroidal Field (TF) coil. The heavy superconducting coil, numbered 17, was cooled to an extreme environment of 4K (minus 269 degrees Celsius) and then successfully energized to 34 kiloamperes (kA), reaching half of its 68kA rated operating current. The coil was then officially removed from the test bench and transferred to the assembly process of the main tokamak device. As a standard unit of the ITER toroidal field magnet system, a single D-shaped TF coil is approximately 17 meters tall, about 9 meters wide, and weighs 330 tonnes, with windings made of advanced niobium-tin...

2026-11-09

Guorui Zhaovolt Achieves Mass Production and Delivery of FRC Fusion Power Supplies

Recently, Wuhu Guorui Zhaovolt Electronics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Guorui Zhaovolt) announced that its all-solid-state pulse power supply, developed specifically for Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC) nuclear fusion devices, has achieved mass production and delivery. This batch of products will be successively shipped to multiple fusion experimental device construction sites across China, providing core power supply support for research institutions and commercial fusion enterprises, marking a new milestone for China in the engineering and mass manufacturing of high-voltage, high-current pulsed power technology. As a new-generation pulsed magnetic confinement nuclear fusion technology, FRC, with its advantages of simple device structure, low construction cost, high modularity, fast iteration speed, and outstanding miniaturization potential...

2026-11-09

US Advances Development of Nuclear-Powered Lunar Rover and Awards Transportation Contract

Recently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) decided to advance the development of the nuclear-powered lunar rover PROMISE and awarded a lunar surface transportation contract to Blue Origin. Blue Origin will use the Mark 1 lander to deliver the six-wheeled rover to the lunar south pole and complete its deployment. The base contract value is $94 million, with an additional contract option worth $140 million contingent on performance. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is responsible for the rover's overall development, and will modify the chassis, electronics, and drive systems based on the engineering test platform of the Curiosity Mars rover, and integrate spare parts and test components from the Curiosity and Perseverance...

2026-11-09

UK fusion device completes key lift of twelve-tonne dual-beam box

Recently, the UK's MAST Upgrade spherical tokamak device completed a key engineering operation: the lifting and positioning of a 12-tonne dual-beam box, creating conditions for the installation of new neutral beam heating equipment. The device is located at the Culham campus and operated by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). It is expanding its experimental capabilities through a heating system upgrade to support the physics and engineering research required for future fusion power plants. The dual-beam box features a two-tier layout and is designed to house two new neutral beam injectors. The equipment transfers energy by injecting high-energy neutral atoms into the plasma. After the upgrade is completed, the device's neutral beam heating power is expected to increase from 4.4 MW to 8.8 MW, and the plasma...

2026-11-07

Kazakhstan Discusses a Century of Uranium Security: Why Build Fuel Reserves When Mineral Resources Are Abundant

Coal can be fed directly into a power plant for combustion, but natural uranium cannot be loaded directly into most commercial reactors. It must undergo processing, conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication, and meet the requirements of specific reactor types. For nuclear power plants, abundant resources are only the starting point for supply security; what truly needs to be obtained on schedule is fuel that has been qualified and can be loaded into the core. On November 3, the Office of the President of Kazakhstan announced that the national leadership had received a report from Kazatomprom on work including the strategic uranium reserve. One day earlier, a relevant official of the energy regulatory authority proposed a strategic concept of retaining at least 150,000 tonnes of uranium resources by 2050. The relevant mechanism is still under study, and it cannot be...

2026-11-07

Manufacturing of Core Components for Egypt's El Dabaa Unit 1 Completed

Recently, all key reactor components for Unit 1 of the El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant in Egypt have been successfully manufactured in St. Petersburg, Russia, marking a major milestone in the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant. As the general contractor for the project, Rosatom has completed the production of the reactor internals and the VVER-1200 reactor head for the unit at its Izhora manufacturing facility in St. Petersburg. The reactor internals and head, which are about to be shipped to Egypt, have a combined weight of approximately 340 tonnes. Including the reactor pressure vessel that has already been delivered and assembled, the total weight will exceed...

2026-11-07

US NAC to Provide Spent Fuel Container Solutions for Norway

Recently, NAC International (NAC) of the United States formally signed a contract with the Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND) to provide advanced dry storage containers and transport solutions for spent nuclear fuel from the former research reactors at Halden and Kjeller in Norway, marking substantive progress in the decommissioning of Norway's legacy nuclear facilities. Over the past sixty years of operation, Norway has accumulated approximately 16.5 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from research reactors, covering various types including metallic uranium fuel, aluminum-clad fuel, and experimental fuel. Following an international tendering process and comprehensive evaluation...

2026-11-07

Environmental Impact Assessment for Site Selection of Haiyang Xin'an Nuclear Power Project in China Enters Pre-Approval Public Notice

Recently, the Environmental Impact Report for the Site Selection Phase of Units 1 and 2 of the Shandong Haiyang Xin'an Nuclear Power Project has entered the pre-approval public notice period. The project is located in Haiyang City, Shandong Province, and is being constructed by CNNC (Shandong) Second Nuclear Energy Co., Ltd. It plans to adopt two Hualong One Version 2.0 pressurized water reactor nuclear power units with a single-unit capacity of 1,220 megawatts, with a planned total installed capacity of 2,440 megawatts. This public notice centers on the environmental impact assessment at the site selection phase, disclosing the project overview, environmental protection measures, and public participation. The total project investment is approximately 44.5 billion yuan, of which environmental protection facility investment is approximately 1.236 billion yuan, accounting for 2.77% of the total investment. Environmental protection arrangements cover both construction and operation phases: during construction, measures such as water spraying for dust suppression...

2026-11-07

Singapore's Nuclear Energy Preparations Enter a New Phase: No Decision Yet to Build a Plant, Why Build Judgment Capacity First

When a country prepares to develop nuclear power, the first thing to appear may not be a reactor order. It may instead first establish a research team to analyze technical options, train regulatory personnel, and study how to handle spent fuel decades from now. This work is far from the construction site, yet it determines whether the country can understand the proposals put forward by suppliers in the future and whether it has the capacity to bear the corresponding responsibilities. On October 30, the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the Singapore Nuclear Research and Safety Institute (SNRSI) under the National University of Singapore announced a five-year cooperation arrangement covering reactor technology assessment, safety analysis, radioactive waste and spent fuel management, and other areas.

2026-11-06

Spain Successfully Develops AI Early Warning System for Algae at Nuclear Power Plants

Recently, Spanish energy services group GDES and the Asociación Nuclear Ascó-Vandellós II (ANAV) jointly announced that the two parties have successfully developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based early warning system named iAlgae. The system is designed to monitor in real time the accumulation of planktonic vegetation and algae at the cooling water intake of nuclear power plants, marking an important breakthrough in O&M technology for nuclear facilities to cope with natural environmental interference. For power generation facilities that use natural surface water for cooling, the accumulation of algae and planktonic vegetation at water intakes is a common natural challenge. iAlgae ...

2026-11-06